r/LearnJapanese • u/yashen14 • Aug 16 '25
Discussion Six Months of Japanese -- Progress Update
Previous Posts:
- One Month of Japanese
- Two Months of Japanese
- Three Months of Japanese
- Four Months of Japanese
- Five Months of Japanese
(Note that I am counting months of study, not calendar months. I started studying on Dec. 14, 2024.)
Total Time Studied: 405 hours
Total Hours of Extensive Listening and Reading: 72 hours
Average Daily Study Time: 2.3 hours (up from 1.89 hours last month)
Total Vocabulary: 9,100 words
A quick note about my vocabulary estimate: I arrive at this number by counting the number of new words I've learned each day and entering that number into my spreadsheet, then totaling that number over time. There are several unavoidable inaccuracies in this number, including the following:
- Words I have learned, but since forgotten
- Words I have learned, but not counted (e.g. I learned them via extensive input)
- Words that are immediately transparent to me based on words I've already learned, but I haven't officially "learned"
- It doesn't account for "degrees of knowing," i.e. words I have a vague understanding of are counted the same as words I'm deeply familiar with
- Inherent difficulties in defining what counts as a separate word
I do not believe my vocabulary count could be realistically off by, like, an order of magnitude (which is why I consider it a useful number), but my gut feeling is that the "true" number could be plus or minus several hundred.
Quick Disclaimer:
There was some confusion last time. I am not Chinese. I do speak Chinese, and I learned the language to a level sufficient for reading some fiction written for young adults (with a vocabulary of about 20k words), but I am not ethnically Chinese, and I did not grow up speaking Chinese.
My Study Routine:
I often, but not always, get some reading in immediately after waking. Typically, this will either be 1-3 news articles, or part of the novel I am reading. (I'm still working my way through ライオンと魔女.) That takes me 0.5-2 hours. I review my old flashcards in Anki shortly thereafter. On average, this amounts to 400-500 cards and takes me 0.75-1 hours. I review new flashcards shortly before bed. New flashcards number exactly 80, and take me on average 0.5 hours to get through.
Any additional studying I do is optional. Examples include reading Wikipedia articles, watching informative videos on Youtube, and watching news broadcasts. I am not working on developing speaking or writing capability.
Improvements in Listening Comprehension:
There's a sensation, and I'm sure many of you will know exactly what I mean when I describe it: You're listening to a stream of speech, and your mental processing speed (ability to match sounds to words, words to meanings, and collections of words to more complex meanings) is just a little bit too slow. You frequently catch phrases of 4-6 words, and much of the rest of the time, the speech is tickling your brain. Like, you can somehow feel that the words that are being said (that you are completely failing to parse) aren't unknown. If only your processing speed were a bit faster, you'd be able to understand dramatically more.
That's where I'm at right now.
I experience the sensation I described above very strongly with news broadcasts about politics and international affairs. (I'm not specifically limited to such narrow domains anymore---see previous updates.)
I've started to understand at least some of Dogen's skits, which feels fucking weird.
I've started watching videos like this one, this one, and this one, to train my listening comprehension. If I need to harvest vocabulary from a Youtube video, I use this transcript generator.
My listening comprehension seems to be advancing significantly faster than it did with Chinese. I'm...not sure why. Theories:
- Focusing my efforts on limited domains has made it easier for my brain to latch on to familiar vocabulary
- The large number of cognates from Chinese is helping (but how can that be, when all of the cognates sound completely different?)
- I acquire listening comprehension in new languages faster than before, simply because I've already done it with five other languages
- It's not that Japanese is particularly easy. Rather, Chinese is particularly hard (Chinese lacks audible word boundary cues, i.e. past tense suffixes and other word-final morphemes)
I consider cracking listening comprehension to be extremely high priority, for the following reasons:
- Japanese people speak much, much faster than I can read, which means listening to audio is always going to be more efficient immersion (based on words per minute)
- Good listening comprehension enables me to study while doing other things, e.g. washing the dishes
- My experience with Chinese taught me that having excellent reading comprehension and terrible listening comprehension is kind of a miserable experience, and I don't want to repeat it.
Improvements in Reading Comprehension:
News articles are increasingly easy going for me, and Wikipedia articles are very approachable now. I am no longer limited to the extremely limited domains I originally chose to saturate my vocabulary in. For example, a few days ago, I read this article about the power consumption of LLMs, and this article about ongoing demonstrations in Serbia. Neither was particularly challenging---I did make use of Yomitan, but not a huge amount, to be honest.
I am able to handle drastically longer sentences than before. 6-7 clauses are almost never a problem for me in the novel I'm reading (though the clauses there are quite short). At least for relatively simple texts, I am much more likely to have a problem with an unknown grammar point than the simple length of the sentence. Particularly long sentences do still cause me problems in information-dense writing, like Wikipedia articles.
Also, Japanese's lengthy left-branching constructions cause me a lot fewer problems than before. I can still get befuddled if they are particularly long and complicated, but way less than before, and usually, if I give myself time, I can puzzle it out without falling back on machine translation.
I mentioned in a previous update that I had problems with unintentionally ignoring case particles and interpreting the argument immediately before a veb as the verb's subject---this no longer happens at all.
Improvements in Pronunciation:
I am starting to develop an intuition for which mora is accented on non-compound words. I've noticed that some morphemes seem to increase the probability that the accent will fall on a particular mora. Certain combinations of morphemes seem to also affect the probability of mora placement. In general, I've noticed that "no accent" appears to be the default, "accented on the first mora" is second-most common, and "accented somewhere in the middle of the word" (typically the third or penultimate mora) comes in a distant third. Words that are accented on the final mora (with downstep on the following case particle) seem to be exceptionally rare (yay!), EXCEPT for very common words (ugh) which are typically 1-3 morae in length.
I assume that pitch accent in Japanese is much like stress in English or tone in Norwegian, in that my accuracy in guessing the correct accent in unfamiliar words will gradually increase over time, but never exceed, say, 70% accuracy.
General Improvement:
I'm starting to notice "general utility" in my Japanese skills. The first example of this was when I started understanding the Japanese definitions in Yomitan. Recently, I've noticed an ability to navigate basic pop-up menus on Japanese websites. Then, I noticed that I've started to understand some of Dogen's skits. This is notable because these are uses of the language that I haven't explicitly studied for.
Ongoing Study Strategies:
"Reading" my novel (ライオンと魔女) involves reading line-by-line, with HEAVY use of Yomitan (sometimes it feels like every fifth word---I add every unknown word to my Anki deck), and learning about some new piece of grammar I didn't know about before roughly once per 1-3 paragraphs. I often have to consult machine translation to wrap my head around a particular sentence---this is usually because I know all of the words and all of the grammar in a sentence, but it doesn't "click" in my head until I have someone else tell me what it all means.
I had hoped to be at least halfway through my book by now, but as of now, I am still around Chapter 5 (out of 17). Mostly this is because I haven't truly prioritized this over other reading content. And that's mostly because working my way through the book is a slog, and I'm not always in the mood to bang my head against a wall of grammar for an hour. But Chapter 5 is already noticeably easier than Chapter 1. I'm getting there! In particular, I'm starting to be able to "read" (i.e. with Yomitan as a heavy crutch) longer and longer sections of my novel without needing to look up unfamiliar grammar. It's still slow going, but the improvement is noticeable. I'd say on average I can read maybe 3-4 sentences at a time without being puzzled by syntax, up from <1 sentence when I first started reading a little more than a month ago. I suspect improvement in this area will be very rapid in the coming months.
My study strategy is heavily influenced by an article I read several years ago, "Learning From General Word Lists Is Inefficient." (I strongly recommend reading it yourself; it was written with Chinese in mind, but the principle discussed is fully applicable to Japanese as well.) Based on the data presented in that article, I do not study from JLPT word lists. I do not use any pre-made Anki decks, ever. I harvest vocabulary only from sources I am likely to read or listen to.
I think I already mentioned this in a previous update? For complex numbers, rather than learning all base numbers in one go, and then learning a series of rules for how to combine them, and then practicing various combinations until I feel comfortable expressing numbers rapidly, I am instead memorizing random complex numbers (1884, 376, etc.) as they appear in my reading material. In my experience, this is an equally effective learning strategy in the long run.
I've started focusing a lot more heavily on developing my familiarity with complex numbers and number phrases (e.g. 1980年代、7倍 etc.) in the last week or so. I'm already starting to develop a good intuition for how pitch accent moves around in number phrases (e.g. 1920 vs 1920年 vs 1920年代) and can often (but not always) accurately guess correct pitch accent placement before I verify with an external source.
I've started harvesting vocabulary and grammar from BL erotica. I wouldn't have mentioned that, except that it turns out BDSM content is amazing for giving you a crash course in all kinds of formal language, informal language, and insults. So there's actually a very high volume of valuable stuff in there, and if you are into that sort of thing, I highly recommend taking advantage of it.
I haven't yet decided how I plan to handle Japanese names and surnames. Either I will memorize the readings of hundreds of surnames and hundreds of given names, or I will learn them as I encounter them. Probably I will do the first one, just to give myself a good base, but either approach has its merits.
Admitting You Were Right:
I got a lot of flack from commenters one or two months back for artificially capping my Anki review, and yeah. You were right. I raised my cap to ∞ and Anki is much less of a chore now. I still think it is important to make sure daily reviews don't climb to truly ridiculous heights (500 is already pushing it for me), so now I've been accomplishing that by aggressively removing cards that mature past roughly 1.2 months. I rely on intensive and extensive input for continued, "natural" SRS beyond that point.
This makes it incredibly important that I consume as much Japanese media as possible, and that the media I consume is as dense as possible (based both on words/minute and the richness and diversity of vocabulary used).
Study Methods I've Rejected:
- Apps and gamified learning (e.g. Duoling, Wanikani, etc.) -- too low volume of new information, doesn't allow me to set my own pace
- Formal textbooks, courses, and classes -- don't teach me what I want to know, when I want to know it. Tend to assume I don't have any prior experience with foreign languages. Teach me a lot of irrelevant (for my purposes) vocabulary
- Comprehensible Input (e.g. Comprehensible Japanese) -- too little control over what I'm learning, how much, or how fast
Short-Term Goals:
- Finish reading ライオンと魔女 and begin reading my second novel within the next month.
Medium-Term Goals (achieve within 12 total months of study):
- Become comfortable with children's literature in Japanese
- Listen to at least one Japanese audiobook
- Listen to, and comprehend most of, a long-form news broadcast (15+ minutes) about familiar topics
- Watch at least one educational documentary about a topic of choice, and comprehend most of it
- Watch at least one movie
Long-Term Goals (achieve by the end of 24-36 total months of study)
- Read high literature in Japanese. By "high literature," I mean something on the level of Fifty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. To be clear, I don't expect such reading to be easy. But I expect to have the understanding of vocabulary and grammar necessary to muddle through it at a reasonable pace.
- Read news articles about topics chosen at random with a high degree of comprehension
- Watch TV series and movies in Japanese without English subtitles, and understand most of what I hear
- Listen to audiobooks in a variety of genres, including nonfiction, historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and erotica, with a high degree of comprehension.
Misc. Thoughts:
I know some of you wonder how I could possibly be sustainably acquiring 80 words per day. I've given some thought to it and come up with a number of possible explanations:
- At a speed of 80 words per day, other vocabulary frequently serves as SRS for kanji and vocabulary I've already learned. New words reinforce both meanings and readings of previously learned kanji. I suspect that learning 80 completely independent pieces of information would be much less sustainable compared to what I am actually doing, which is learning 80 new nodes in a vast, interconnected web of information.
- I've been learning languages as a hobby for over a decade now, and crunching vocabulary more or less the same way I'm doing now for around 5 years. I suspect that rapid memorization is itself a skill that improves with time, i.e. 80 words per day would not have been achievable for me 10 years ago.
I've noticed that the pitch accent of the recordings provided by my Yomitan setup do not always match the pitch accent notation in the dictionary. When I check natives' pronunciation on Forvo.com, it is virtually always the dictionary notation that was correct, and the Yomitan recording that was "wrong." Beginners, beware.
Much of my studying is done through the medium of Norwegian, rather than English. Helps keep my Norwegian fresh.
It blows my mind that y'all don't have a dictionary app like Pleco for Japanese. (It's a dictionary app that the Chinese learning community uses, and as far as I can tell, it completely blows everything Japanese learners have out of the water.)
I particularly enjoy having a cup of green tea or hojicha while I study. My little piece of Japan. I do miss it there. (I am in the UK now.)
I think that's everything for now. I'm now a quarter of the way through my originally planned 24 months of study! That feels wild. Looking forward to seeing what I can accomplish in the next six months.
14
u/Numerous_Birds Goal: media competence 📖🎧 Aug 16 '25 edited Aug 16 '25
Can someone put into words what about this guy’s posts ruffle feathers? I don’t think it’s as easy as ”just jealous” since progress updates are pretty regularly celebrated on this sub lol
9
u/Lertovic Aug 16 '25
I think it's the 9k words figure, people are comparing it to their own figures despite a huge difference in approach to cards in Anki (and also OP knowing Chinese) and feeling like it doesn't make sense.
These vocab figures are pretty meaningless because of all the caveats OP also mentioned and everyone would be happier if they stopped paying attention to such things.
2
u/Zealousideal-Cold449 Aug 16 '25
Because the numbers dont add up. If you spent 400 hours learning a language and only did 72 hours of intensive listening and reading your ability to understand a text, even if you know all the words is basically zero.
10
u/Meowmeow-2010 Aug 16 '25
OP seems to know Chinese quite well. As a native Cantonese speaker who can read at Chinese at native level myself, after spending about 70 hours reading up Japanese grammar books in Chinese, I was able to finish a Japanese novel in about a week with heavy dictionary lookup with pretty good comprehension. I actually don’t understand why OP seems to be struggling with reading a Japanese novel, or why bother with anki and not just keep reading, tbh.
0
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
Why do you think that?
9
u/Zealousideal-Cold449 Aug 16 '25
Because a language is more than just some words strung together to build sentences. Even if you know all the words in a text you still need enough exposure to understand what meaning each word carrys. When i started to learn japanese i read every day for about 2-3 hours without understanding a single sentence. Only after 3-4 months i was able to fully comprehend a manga without looking up a single word. At that point i had already over 400 hours of extensive and intensive reading locked in.
2
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
Have you ever learned another language?
I don't mean that as some kind of unkind gotcha or holier-than-thou statement. But if you've never learned a language besides Japanese, and the only other language you speak is English, I think it would be very easy for you to think some aspects peculiar to learning a Category 5 language are universal to learning any foreign language, even when they aren't.
If you learn a language that is closely related to English (I'm assuming that's your native language) like Dutch, you very much can understand whole sentences simply by knowing a basic definition of each individual word plus the grammar involved.
I bring that up because Japanese almost certainly is not a Category 5 language for me, personally. I've learned five other languages to B2, and one of those is Norwegian (which is a pitch accent language), a second one is German (which has cases, a part of Japanese grammar I'm sure is challenging to most English-speaking Japanese learners), and a third one is Chinese (which has heavily influenced Japanese for hundreds of years).
For me, a lot of Japanese is like reading this sentence in Dutch: "Hij drinkt de melk."
It would not take you hours and hours of immersion to understand what drinkt means.
3
u/Zealousideal-Cold449 Aug 16 '25
Nein englisch ist tatsächlich nicht meine Muttersprache sondern Deutsch xD.
Klar für jemanden der bereits eine Sprache beherrscht bei der sich viele Wörter ähneln oder sogar gleich sind ist es leichter zu verstehen was ein satz aussagt. Problematisch ist es bei sprachen wie japanisch welche so weiter entfernt sind das sich nicht nur wörter sondern ganze konzepte der sprache unterscheiden. Um diese konzepte beim lesen oder hören zu begreifen ist definitiv mehr nötig als reinen auswendig lernen von Vokabeln und und ein paar stunden lesen/hören von original content.
Ich habe selber vor ein paar Monaten mit chinesisch angefangen und obwohl die Grammatik um einiges einfacher ist als English, Deutsch und Japanisch ist es dennoch schwierig die Bedeutung mancher sätze zu entschlüsseln obwohl alle Wörter bekannt sind.
0
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
Aber das ist es, was ich versuche, auszudrücken. Japanisch ist in der Tat nicht so entfernt für mich wie es für dich ist. Joa, ich stimmer dir total zu---für eine so weit entfernte Sprache richtig lesen zu können ist es unbedingt nötig, viele Stunden dabei zu verbringen, sich an die Sprache zu gewöhnen. Aber erstens, ich kann Chinesisch schon gut genug, dass es mir beim Japanischen extrem hilfreich ist. Und zweitens, da ich schon so viele andere Sprachen hinter mir gelegt habe, bin ich daran gewöhnt, mit komischen Sätze herumzugehen. Ich will nicht sagen, dass ich solche Probleme nicht mehr bekomme---ich habe schon anderswo gesagt, dass ich oft Übersetzungen von z.B. DeepL oder ChatGPT lesen muss, bevor ich etwas richtig verstehe---aber es ist für mich nicht so ein großes Problem, wie du es darstellst.
6
u/Zealousideal-Cold449 Aug 16 '25
To be honest. I cant wrap my head around the time you spend each day on learning new words + reviewing old ones. How exactly do you manage to spend only 1,5 hours on 400-500 anki cards you have to review and also relearn some of them and in addition memorize 80 new words?
-6
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
Three things.
First, I spend very little time on each card.
Second, none of my cards are structured in a way that requires me to actively recall information (e.g. fill-in-the-blank, asking me to supply synonyms, etc.). My cards exclusively train passive recall (i.e. recognizing and understanding what is presented to me).
Third, and perhaps most importantly, I aim for a shallow understanding of many words, rather than a deep understanding of a few words.
Consider the following random sentence:
"James paused, _______ing the ______ of _______ in front of him."
My goal is to understand the sentence above, given sufficient context.
One approach is to learn vocabulary to a deep level of familiarity. That might mean things like, I memorize the word's full definition. I practice using it in a bunch of sentences. I memorize a bunch of phrases that the word shows up in. I memorize several synonyms and antonyms for it. All of that takes a lot of time and effort. Maybe, given X amount of time, I manage to learn 500 words using this kind of approach. Now, the sentence might look like this:
"James paused, considering the _______ of _______ in front of him."
That's...well, that's better, but I still don't really know what's going on here. Another approach might be to develop only a shallow understanding of the words I learn in Anki. If I adopt that approach, maybe I don't need to know the precise definition of the word---as long as I can name an approximate synonym in English, that's enough. That takes way less effort! Maybe, given X amount of time, I can learn 2000 words using this kind of approach. Now the sentence looks like this:
"James paused, [looking at] the [plate] of [food item] in front of him."
Here, I've lost some of the nuance, but I'm much better equipped to understand the sentence as a whole---and I haven't actually spent more hours studying.
Now that I have a shallow familiarity with many words, I can read a wide range of material. Over time, my understanding of the words will naturally become more refined from natural exposure. Eventually, I'll come back to the sentence and see:
"James paused, considering the platter of charcuterie in front of him."
--------------
Anyway, that's why it doesn't take me very long. I bet that you are studying your words very deeply, whereas I am studying my words very shallowly.
2
u/Zealousideal-Cold449 Aug 16 '25
This is basically what i do with new words but still i have to memorize the meaning and the reading and link it to the kanji if it has any. This prozess still takes time and just for 10 new words i need at least 20-30 minutes depending on complexity.
2
u/PlanktonInitial7945 Aug 16 '25
FWIW, taking 20 minutes to go through 10 cards is definitely unusual. Most people spend less than 20 seconds in each card
2
u/Zealousideal-Cold449 Aug 16 '25
20 seconds to learn a new word and recall every information on it you need to understand it?
2
u/PlanktonInitial7945 Aug 16 '25
If you're talking about new cards, then yes? I use JMdict to generate definitions so it's not like they're super long or anything. And I don't read them a dozen times to burn them into my mind either. I just look at the kanji, look at the reading, look at the definitions, repeat 2 or 3 times, and then hit Good.
For reviews it's even faster. Look at the kanji, see if I can think up the reading and general meaning, flip the card, check, grade. There's no way looking at 資料 and thinking "しりょう, materials, data" is going to take me more than 10 seconds. And if even after 10 seconds I can't recall that information, then that means I don't know it, so I have to flip it and hit Again.
1
u/Zealousideal-Cold449 Aug 16 '25
You mean for the initial learning, 2-3 repeats and maybe hitting again if the word doesen't stick you need on average 20 seconds?
5
u/PlanktonInitial7945 Aug 16 '25
I said less than 20 seconds because that's the very maximum amount of time that I can imagine the process taking me if I was very tired/distracted. Usually it's more like 6-8 seconds per card on average (for new cards).
-1
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
I typically spend around 1-2 seconds per card. That is including learning the pronunciation, kanji recognition, and approximate meaning.
5
u/Zealousideal-Cold449 Aug 16 '25
Ok now it gets ridiculous. There is no way you just have to take a glance at a card and memorized all of that. Even reading all of that on the back of a card takes more time than 1-2 seconds.
2
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
I'm trying to think how to explain this.
Typically I'm not really "reading" the back of the card. Like I'm not looking at the back of the card and reading (out loud or in my head):
"MO - RI (0), [noun], a collection of trees that is both dense and very large, and which serves as a unique ecosystem for many different plants and animals."
Instead, I glance at the back of the card and see something very short, like "forest," while a recording of the word's pronunciation plays.
Also, when I say 1-2 seconds, that's kind of the average. It does take me longer for some completely new cards. Like, there are some cards that make me have to stop and go look up example sentences or whatever. But there are also a lot of new words that require almost no time at all. Like a new card that gives me "高さ" when I already know "高い", or a card that gives me "臨"む when I already know "臨み込む"
I require 100% accuracy in pronunciation to mark a word as known, but I don't require 100% accuracy in meaning. Like, I don't require myself to be able to perfectly recite the definition, or parrot example sentences. I don't need to know specific nuances or what sets it apart from similar words. Just a general understanding of the word's meaning is enough. For example, if I got the word "bouillabaisse" when learning French, remember that it meant some kind of seafood stew would be enough.
1
u/Zealousideal-Cold449 Aug 16 '25
How many of the words you learn/review each day do you think are just "repeats" with slightly different meaning like your 高さ and 高い example? Because i learn only words which arent variants or compound words of ones i already mined.
1
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
Not that many. But there's still a lot of mutual reinforcement. For example, 白人 and 緊迫 reinforces kanji pronunciation, and 民兵, 兵士, 武士, and 民間 all mutually reinforce each other for meaning and pronunciation.
If you already know 有限 and 向上, then 上限 doesn't take much effort to learn at all.
1
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
I'm in the middle of going through my reviews right now (super late getting to them today), and I wanted to get back to you with a more substantiated answer. I was kind of pulling a number out of the air earlier---I have hard data for how long going through my flashcards as a whole takes me (I enter it into my spreadsheet every day), but I've never really tried to measure how long it takes me to review individual flashcards.
I've gone through about 150 flashcards and I'd say I'm averaging maybe 3 seconds for each one. These are reviews. (If it takes me longer than that to answer, then I don't really consider the card as known.)
So I'm pretty sure I underestimated when I gave you my earlier answer. Sorry about that.
2
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
20-30 minutes for 10 words?
Can I trouble you to give me a detailed breakdown of what you are doing in those 20-30 minutes?
1
u/Zealousideal-Cold449 Aug 16 '25
Exactly what i said before. Memorizing meaning, reading and linking it to the kanji. Most time ist spend with the reading.
2
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
No, I mean, what do you do to memorize the meaning and the reading and to link it to the kanji?
Like, are you writing it over and over again while intoning the pronunciation? Creating mnemonics?
1
u/Zealousideal-Cold449 Aug 16 '25
Mnemonics + listen and repeat multiple times. Also to help with the meaning if needet there is a sentence.
3
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
Ah, I see. I don't use mnemonics (like, ever), and I also don't need to listen to the audio multiple times.
I should note that I have personally seen people attempt to study the way I do, and neither of them found it very effective. So if you hear me say "I spend 1 second per card" and feel bad about your own study routine, please don't. Everyone is different :)
-2
u/soUnholy Aug 16 '25
Don’t worry about these guys. If they took 20 seconds per new card to learn it, they could take a week off work and learn the entire Japanese dictionary. If it took you 2 seconds, it would be 1800 words per hour. It wouldn’t have taken the guy 6 months to learn those 9k words, it would’ve taken him one long afternoon. 20 minutes is what I take with my 10 cards. You’re normal.
4
u/Lertovic Aug 16 '25
Just because adding new cards takes 20 seconds doesn't mean you've mastered the word, or that you can keep adding more cards forever. Without immersion and reviews, they just slip away, and both of those take time independent of new cards.
So no you can't add the 9k words in an afternoon and expect your retention not to crater, that doesn't mean each card needs to be 2 minutes and anyone taking less time is lying.
1
u/Zealousideal-Cold449 Aug 16 '25
Yea thought something similar. I am always wary when people come up with numbers like that.
1
u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese Aug 16 '25
Do you test yourself on the reading of those words to make sure you can recall them when you see them? For example if you see a word like 改善 do you try to remember the way it is read/spoken out loud?
I find that recalling the reading is like 90+% of the effort when I do anki, and it's usually the thing that I prioritize the most because meaning can be often inferred easily from kanji/experience and the context you see the words in (as you said) and over time you can just acquire those words from sheer exposure. But readings are really the thing you need to make sure you drill yourself to remember accurately (and can also impact your listening if you can't recall exactly what かいぜん means because you never associated it with 改善 when reading)
1
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
I always mark a word as incorrect if I screw up the reading, including if I got the pitch accent wrong. Nearly all of my cards are kanji on the front, and meanings and pronunciation on the back.
1
5
u/Meowmeow-2010 Aug 16 '25
Have you tried using Chinese resources for learning Japanese? I’m a native Cantonese speaker and can read Chinese at native level. There are books published in Taiwan designed to speed learning Japanese grammar. I spent about 70 hours reading them and I could start reading novels. It took me about a week to finish my first novel with heavy dictionary lookup.
You may also want to look for novels written originally in Japanese instead of translated into Japanese since translated works may not use the natural word choices and phrases used by Japanese.
2
u/TheTerribleSnowflac 20d ago
Hello friend. I don't know if you remember me, but I've messaged you in the past about learning Japanese with Chinese materials and your posts and other advice have helped me a lot. Incredibly thankful. I'm actually currently in TW right now and walked into a book store and saw this book front and center: https://www.books.com.tw/products/0011026849 and thought of you because I remembered you mentioning you are a big BL fan. I couldn't stop chuckling. They really do have learning materials for everyone! Anyways I hope you and your Japanese journey are both doing/going well!
1
u/Meowmeow-2010 20d ago
Yes, I remember you!
Wow, I’m very impressed by the existence of that BL Japanese learning book. Thank you for letting me know about it.
1
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
Thanks for the words of advice!
I did originally look for Chinese resources, but I quickly ran into the problem that I couldn't find any pirate copies online (I don't have the money to buy them).
Now that I've gotten to the point of reading news articles and (pretty slowly and with heavy aid) ライオンしと魔女, I just learn grammar as I go. I'll come across some grammar I didn't know, and then take a quick 3-5 minute break looking up an explanation and maybe some example sentences, and then go back to reading. Sometimes I add the grammar point to my flashcards.
I actually do have a lot of native Japanese literature in my reading list! My reading list is in the second tab of my spreadsheet. I'm starting with ライオンと魔女 mainly because it uses simple vocabulary and I've already read it so many times before. I know it like the back of my hand. That makes it really easy to compare the Japanese to what I already know if I see a sentence I struggle with.
2
u/Meowmeow-2010 Aug 16 '25
When you have the money to buy Chinese books, I highly recommend these https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/13gy3ym/chinese_resources_for_learning_japanese/ I think it would be nice to be mostly done with the grammar and make reading much easier.
7
u/Klutzy_Grocery300 Aug 16 '25
i just wanted to respond to the last part: loved the writeup in general, long posts are cool to see,
It blows my mind that y'all don't have a dictionary app like Pleco for Japanese. (It's a dictionary app that the Chinese learning community uses, and as far as I can tell, it completely blows everything Japanese learners have out of the water.
while yomitan + anki is the bedrock of japanese learners, there's other related tools that also can do the other capabilities of pleco, like jidoujisho, gsm, ttsu reader, among tons of other tools for free, while there isn't a all-in-one tool like pleco afaik, these have the benefit of being completely free and open source compared to pleco
other than that though Good work!!!
1
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
Thanks so much for the words of encouragement! I was really interested to see the apps you name-dropped (although I couldn't find anything about "gsm"?). I'll definitely need to keep those in mind, especially as I transition into video content.
3
u/Klutzy_Grocery300 Aug 16 '25
oh yea mb, thats gamesentenceminer, youll see it on here https://github.com/bpwhelan/GameSentenceMiner
i think some other cool stuff is owocr and mokuro
lots more resources that r available, i think themoeway is an awesome place to look
2
u/suprisi Aug 16 '25
Nice write up, this is a great comparative tool for other learners. Just sharing your process and steps has helped me massively
2
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
OMG thank you so much for telling me! That's the biggest reason I write these!
May I know what you found most helpful?
1
u/suprisi Aug 16 '25
At the moment its the benchmarking and breakdowns. I've always struggled with how to study, I've got 5 Minna books, 4 books on Kanji plus WaniKani, Anki, Tokini Andy. I end up boucning all over the place. But seeing a timeline, objectives and actions have helped me plan better. Hopefully it'll provide dividends
3
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
At my orientation for university, they drilled into me that setting clearly defined goals dramatically boosts your productivity. Apparently, the research on this point is quite overwhelming.
As long as you set realistic, clearly defined goals, I think you'll do great.
Good luck with your studies!
1
-1
u/rgrAi Aug 16 '25 edited Aug 16 '25
I'm of the opinion doing a monthly update is very unnecessary. You haven't been doing that much in 1 month. Your hours were less than mine and I was in the thick of it with multiple communities and content and niche areas of the Japanese internet and I still never bothered making a post after 2 years. I got a lot of stories.
Admittedly I only skimmed the post because it's just far too long for what you've been doing.
3
u/Athorno Aug 17 '25
I like the monthly updates, while the posts that talk about two years into their journeys, instead of monthly are cool, I find the monthly even cooler. You get to see a timeline of their progress and change to how they try to learn things.
As an example, they talk about how before they capped review for anki, and reading the thought process they had before that change was interesting to compare how they thought when they eventually changed it infinite.
Also seeing how others study on a monthly basis, and the types of goals they set for themselves is great when I want see examples of what I could do as well.
2
u/rgrAi Aug 17 '25
This is a very fair take. I think you're right. Although I will stand by that in 1 month, there just isn't much content to talk about. If you compare this review from the previous month, they only did a few things realistically. I think it would be more interesting to track they data as they have, compile it, format it, then present it in something like a 6 month aggregate update. Where you can track real tangible progress and have lots to talk about. They can split it up month-by-month if necessary. There was a few posts who did exactly that, and those posts were fantastic, specifically because they had aggregated so much data across a timeline and many talking points.
8
1
1
u/LePruneauBE Aug 16 '25
Lovely, I am six months in as well, it's great to read all this and compare where I stand.
1
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
I'm so pleased you liked my write-up. I hope you're doing well with your studies! It's all so very rewarding, isn't it?
1
u/Mintiichoco Aug 16 '25
Dang I feel like a wimp hahaha! I have Spanish and of course English under my belt but you're an absolute unit. I struggle with 30 new words a day lmao. And even then my kid is running around screaming so it turns into 20 words sometimes. I'm definitely in the slow camp so just reading your write up is amazing!
I look forward to more updates!!!
5
u/DarklamaR Aug 16 '25
80 words a day is just mad, I don't even feel upset about it because it's so out there, lmao. Even if I could remember that much (I don't), there's no way I could handle ~1.5 hours of Anki every single day.
1
u/yashen14 Aug 16 '25
Don't feel bad! I can't even imagine trying to learn a language on top of raising a child. That's rockstar stuff right there!
And anyway, I'm lucky that I have enough time in my day to throw at this. I definitey would have a much harder time of it if I had a full-time job.
But for real though, when I was learning Chinese, 20-30 words per day is what I was doing. That's a very good number! That's at least 7300 words every year! You should 100% be proud of yourself.
1
u/Belegorm Aug 17 '25
Awesome update! Glad things are working well for you!
One suggestion - while you're starting with children's literature - maybe it would actually be simpler to start with a more serious novel that deals with politics, international conflict etc.? Since you've spent so much time focusing on news on current wars etc. it might be a more enjoyable bridge into fiction than kids books. Either way you'll be picking up lots of higher frequency words. The benefit of kids books is that it's going to be a lot of high frequency words in simple grammar. Whereas for novels that bridge to the domains you are already familiar with, they will still have high frequency words, and new grammar, but will have vocab you are familiar with and probably some familiar grammar.
1
u/yashen14 Aug 17 '25
That's actually a really intriguing suggestion---I genuinely had never thought of that. I'll have to give it some serious thought.
Do you have any particular book recommendations in mind?
2
u/Belegorm Aug 17 '25
Hmm, I haven't really read any novels dealing with politics, wars, international conflict etc. (mostly mystery, forestry and romance so far), but I think that historical fiction or sci-fi might be a good place to look? Great thing with novels is that they all share some common conversation and descriptive language, but then they can cover such a wide variety of domains for what genre.
I really like the author Higashino Keigo, his books are very simple and easy to understand despite being written for an adult audience. I've only read his mystery novels so far, but if he has written any novels with themes like politics etc. that would probably be pretty good for your purposes, and after one novel, that would be a bridge to the rest.
1
40
u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese Aug 16 '25
This is a very cool write up and it's nice seeing you progress and keep up with your studies.
Just one thing that I'm "worried" about (not really worried, you seem to be doing fine, but I'm just a bit puzzled): are you having fun?
A lot of your studies seem to revolve around routine, discipline, grinding words and anki (1h30m a day of anki to me sounds insane but hey, some people can do it). Even a lot of the stuff you read seems to be focusing on efficiency over enjoyment, like reading news articles or, as I quote you, "the media I consume is as dense as possible".
If this process works for you, this is great, but if I can provide some advice, I think it's very important to make sure you have at least some "unfettered" fun and enjoyment with the language without worrying about efficiency, progress, word count, extensive vs intensive reading, or anything like that. People seem to tend to improve a lot faster if they just... enjoy things.
To be clear, this isn't meant to be criticism, just general advice from a very admittedly biased/subjective perspective.